From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Oct 26 18:21:42 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Approved-By: Nigel Haslock Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 14:02:07 -0700 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Nigel Haslock Subject: Surcharges - Fiacha replies to Morgan To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <199510261849.NAA33832@black.missouri.edu> Greetings from Fiacha, > First, yes, let us be socialistic or libertarian or whatever you wish to call > it, and not charge anything extra to those who do not belong. This is fair, > and open, and friendly, and however else you choose to characterize it. I > am not trying to sound perjorative here, I am trying to be supportive of the > no-surcharge movement, especially because of all the paperwork it creates. > > {Our answer is simple -- no site fee. We do fundraising to pay the rental.} Sorry, I find this just as objectionable as the surcharge. I go to events to do medieval stuff. Fundraising as part of the main event is not medieval, unless it be for medievally appropriate goals, and cover the cost of the site doesn't cut it any more than building a financial cushion for a profligate corporation cuts it. > Second, I am very used to members getting discounts from groups on admission > and so forth. Museum members get in without paying the admission charge. > Bar association members get $5.00 off on lectures and seminars. And so on. > It is a fact of the world that for many/most organizations, those who are > members get a financial advantage over those who are not. In all of these cases, it seems to me that the organization has no means of accepting contributions of labor from the non-member and instead pays the going rate for whatever menial labor is required. > I don't think the surcharge should be the focus of the GC's discussions, > although it seems to be everybody's hot button. It's a lesser issue than the > questions of restructuring and franchising. I think the GC ought to be > spending its energy there, and once a new structure has been determined, > figure out about the surcharges. I agree. I believe that we need to focus more tightly both on what we are doing here and how we are doing it. We need a chairman (or woman). We need to decide how to handle proposals, motions and the like. We need to decide how to cut off discussion on subjects that have been talked out, either temporarily or permanently. We need to reach closure on the membership issue because that is fundamental to too many other discussions. We need to reach closure on the landmarks issue because that too is fundamental to a number of other issues. Along these lines, I have decided to discourage non-members of the GC for irrelevant postings. I will forward messages that seem germaine but will attempt, once, to persuade the author of any other message to reconsider. Fiacha From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Oct 26 18:28:26 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Greg Rose Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 17:58:09 -0400 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Greg Rose Subject: Re: My post and your reply To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L I am forwarding the following for Estrill Swet. Hossein Ali Qomi (Greg Rose) FORWARDED POSTING: Hossein, please forward this to the GC list. Thanks. Michael Potter wrote: >I disagree with many of the statements you make that are actually >opinion. I disagree that small changes are not enough. One of your most >important points is that the members have little say in where the money >is spent and what decisions are made. Actually, at the local level, the >average member does have a fair amount of say about where the money is >spent and what the group does and election of local officers is pretty >common. Most participants in the SCA participate at the local level and >this is the level that effects them. Making the election of local >officers mandatory would be a small change, but would put local >resources in the hands of the local groups. Having an effective audit >and financial reporting of SCA, Inc. would be a small change, but would >provide much better information to the members about where their money >is being spent. But the we're not talking about local groups and I don't think most of the council members are worried (at this juncture) about them. And yes, I agree, the average *involved* local member does have a fair amount of say about where the money goes and what the group does. However, it's not the local groups' actions that have caused the Board to impose the NMS tax on the non-members. Or raise the price of memberships. And this was to raise the necessary funds for, what? The continued operating of the BoD? To have slick paper in the TI? (Which was really awful, IMHO, nasty feeling.) It's this lack of say in where and how the *corporate* money is raised and spent that is causing problems and this is what most of the GC members are talking about. And this is also what *I'm* concerned about. Estrill Swet Mooneschadoweshire From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Oct 26 22:22:10 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3535 Approved-By: Joseph Heck Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 20:39:15 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Joseph Heck Subject: Re: Surcharges - Morgan replies to Fiacha (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Morgan > Fiacha took issue with some things I had said: > > Me > {Our answer is simple -- no site fee. We do fundraising to pay > Me > the rental.} > > >> Sorry, I find this just as objectionable as the surcharge. I go to > >> events to do medieval stuff. Fundraising as part of the main event > >> is not medieval, unless it be for medievally appropriate goals, and > >> cover the cost of the site doesn't cut it any more than building a > >> financial cushion for a profligate corporation cuts it. > > I didn't say we did it at the Events -- many of our demos bring in a tidy > amount, and we can easily cover the full cost of an Event by doing 2-3 a year. > > Also, some Fundraising -- such as a raffle, auction, etc. -- fit in with > medievality, and do not sound like the "penny-for-the-poor" stuff that seems to > be the source of our objection. In fact, the auction at the last Event not only > more than covered the cost, but was a LOT of fun -- especially when our Marshall > pranced through the crowd modelling the sample surcote. > > Me > Second, I am very used to members getting discounts from groups on > Me > admission and so forth. > > >> In all of these cases, it seems to me that the organization has no means > >> of accepting contributions of labor from the non-member and instead pays > >> the going rate for whatever menial labor is required. > > Nope. For the Bar Association, it's called 'law student' -- that's how I > afforded a lot of programmes when I was in law school. If you agreed to work, > you got a STEEP discount, or even free admission. Also worked for the Bar Exam. > I know that Museum staff and docents get similar benefits. > > We do that at Events too -- when there is a feast fee, if you help serve or > cleanup, it is refunded. (Harsh experience shows that the refund is the most > successful way, unfortunately, of ensuring that the people who do the work get > the benefit.) Many of our student members attend Events this way, and when I > was a student it was the only way I could afford to attend some Events. Maybe > things are different in your Kingdom. > > Me > I think the GC ought to be spending its energy there, and once a > Me > new structure has been determined, figure out about the surcharges. > > >> I agree. I believe that we need to focus more tightly both on what > >> we are doing here and how we are doing it. > > > > >> Along these lines, I have decided to discourage non-members of the GC for > >> irrelevant postings. I will forward messages that seem germaine but will > >> attempt, once, to persuade the author of any other message to reconsider. > > Was this directed at me, or fortuitous? As I am not a GC member, quantity of > postings occasionally seeming to indicate the contrary, I have tried to keep > then to the point and avoid irrelevance, personality hostility, or thread drift. > I realize that there's work to be done, and don't want to waste your time or > energies. > > ---= Morgan > > > > > > > > > |\ THIS is the cutting edge of technology! > 8+%%%%%%%%I=================================================--- > |/ Morgan Cely Cain * 72672.2312@compuserve.com > > -- joe (314) 882-5000 ccjoe@showme.missouri.edu University of Missouri - Columbia "with a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!" -- Calvin ccjoe From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Fri Oct 27 12:10:08 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Rooscc@AOL.COM Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 11:29:26 -0400 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Carole C. Roos" Subject: Alsyoun: GC vote To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Good Morning from Alysoun Fiacha, are you just serving as temporary chair or also in the running for a more permanent position? I take it that the primary topic on the table is who is willing and has time to serve. While we are waiting for other volunteers, let's consider the possibility that the Council may have already fallen apart. What is a reasonable level of participation in the vote to think that we can carry on? We started with 40 members. If we hear from 30, don't you think that is sufficient? If we hear from 10 or less, wouldn't that signal the time to disband? (We've heard from 15 just in the past week or so.) The real question is that mid-point. It might be a good idea for each of us to hustle around and contact the less talkative members in our area to make sure that they know a vote is coming up. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Fri Oct 27 12:13:44 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3632 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 11:26:55 -0400 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: Galleron: Proposal: Duties of Chair Defined (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Galleron, by Tibor Forwarded message: From WMclean290@aol.com Fri Oct 27 11:22 EDT 1995 Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 11:21:27 -0400 Message-ID: <951027112125_78216258@emout06.mail.aol.com> To: schuldy@abel.math.harvard.edu Subject: Galleron: Proposal: Duties of Chair Defined Please forward to GC Galleron here: I agree that the GC seems to be having difficulty making concrete progress under the current free discussion format. I think Fiacha's proposal makes a great deal of sense. I make bold to frame a specific proposal on those lines. Proposed duties of Chair or Vice-Chair On a weekly basis the chair will post both a future default agenda and a current default agenda. The chair need not post if there is no change from the previous week. The future agenda will consist of those subjects the council as a whole wishes to eventually address. The current agenda will consist of no more than three subjects for current discussion. In addition, discussion of the content of the current and the future agendas will always be permitted. In the current agenda, the chair will list, in order of importance, the subjects which, in the consensus of the GC, merit most immediate discussion. If no consensus emerges, the chair will use its best judgement. Specific actionable proposals will be assumed to have priority for discussion. Specific counter-proposals to specific proposals will be considered one subject. If a new matter bcomes sufficiently urgent, the chair may add it to the current agenda. If this brings the total topics (not including agenda content itself) to more than three the least pressing topic will be dropped back to the future agenda. Topics may also be moved back to the future agenda to await later discussion with more complete information. Proposals may also be resolved as interim positions, which are considered to represent the consensus of the GC but are not immediately sent on to the board because they are affected by other proposals yet to be discussed. With each topic, the chair will strive to either bring forward a specific statement, preferably an actionable proposal, representing the consensus of the GC, along with a dissenting position if any, table the topic if progress can better be achieved later, or, if it is clear that consensus will never be achieved, collect statements of the different positions of the members of the GC. GC members dissatisfied with either agenda may seek to persuade the chair by public or private posting. If still dissatisfied they may bring a motion to amend either agenda, which shall prevail by simple majority of those voting. In addition to the chair, the council will select a vice chair, who will serve when the chair is unable. Councilors may at any time bring a motion to choose a new chair or vice-chair, which will prevail by simple majority of votes cast. If the motion prevails against the chair, the vice chair will serve until a new chair is chosen. It will be the duty of the chair to remind councilors of the agenda when they wander off it. Councilors are urged to ask non-councilors submitting non-relevant postings if they can be held until they become relevant to current discussion. (end of proposal) I hope this doesn't seem too fascist. Note that the council can over-ride the chair's agenda at any time- the function of the default agenda is to keep things moving with a minimum of procedural effort, unless the council thinks the chair has jumped the rails. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Fri Oct 27 18:13:42 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Approved-By: Nigel Haslock Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 14:06:21 -0700 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Nigel Haslock Subject: Re: Surcharges - Fiacha back to Morgan To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <199510270139.UAA59790@gold.missouri.edu> Greetings from Fiacha On Thu, 26 Oct 1995, Joseph Heck wrote: > Forwarded for Morgan > > > Fiacha took issue with some things I had said: > > > > Me > {Our answer is simple -- no site fee. We do fundraising to pay > > Me > the rental.} > > > > I didn't say we did it at the Events -- many of our demos bring in a tidy > > amount, and we can easily cover the full cost of an Event by doing 2-3 a year. I apologise for sounding harsh. I my experience, fundraising has been an objectionably mundane part of any event that was visibly losing money. I admire any branch that separates its fund raising activities from its purely medieval (at least as good as we can manage) events. > > We do that at Events too -- when there is a feast fee, if you help serve or > > cleanup, it is refunded. (Harsh experience shows that the refund is the most > > successful way, unfortunately, of ensuring that the people who do the work get > > the benefit.) Many of our student members attend Events this way, and when I > > was a student it was the only way I could afford to attend some Events. Maybe > > things are different in your Kingdom. This sounds like exception behaviour on the part of your branch. If the society in general paid for the labor donated by non-members, I would have little objection to a non-member surcharge. However, I still fail to make a connection between cnetral office funding and local operations that finance events. > > >> Along these lines, I have decided to discourage non-members of the GC for > > >> irrelevant postings. I will forward messages that seem germaine but will > > >> attempt, once, to persuade the author of any other message to reconsider. > > > > Was this directed at me, or fortuitous? As I am not a GC member, quantity of > > postings occasionally seeming to indicate the contrary, I have tried to keep > > then to the point and avoid irrelevance, personality hostility, or thread drift. > > I realize that there's work to be done, and don't want to waste your time or > > energies. This was not intended as a dig at anyone whose posts have been seen. I apologize if I gave that impression. I was serving notice that I will be doing my bit to reduce the amount of irrelevant chatter. Fiacha From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Fri Oct 27 18:24:06 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Approved-By: Nigel Haslock Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 14:33:50 -0700 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Nigel Haslock Subject: Re: Alsyoun: GC vote To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <951027112925_91074546@emout05.mail.aol.com> Greetings from Fiacha, On Fri, 27 Oct 1995, Carole C. Roos wrote: > Good Morning from Alysoun > > Fiacha, are you just serving as temporary chair or also in the running for a > more permanent position? I did not think that I had official capacity at this time time. I offered to hold the chair, if you all want me to and I warned that I would, most likely, have to give it up when work gets in the way. > I take it that the primary topic on the table is who is willing and has time > to serve. While we are waiting for other volunteers, let's consider the > possibility that the Council may have already fallen apart. What is a > reasonable level of participation in the vote to think that we can carry on? > > We started with 40 members. If we hear from 30, don't you think that is > sufficient? If we hear from 10 or less, wouldn't that signal the time to > disband? (We've heard from 15 just in the past week or so.) The real question > is that mid-point. My feeling is that if we drop below 20 votes on any formal vote we then need to fix the council. I am not concerned if only 10 people are posting so long as they are arguing. > It might be a good idea for each of us to hustle around and contact the less > talkative members in our area to make sure that they know a vote is coming > up. True. Fiacha From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Fri Oct 27 21:46:01 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Approved-By: Nigel Haslock Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 17:41:17 -0700 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Nigel Haslock Subject: Impeachment - Fiacha To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <199510270139.UAA59790@gold.missouri.edu> Greetings from Fiacha, This started out as a response to something on the AnTir list but applies at all levels. Given the general objection to elections, propose a means for replacing an incumbent that will not be seen as a personal attack on the incumbent (an officer's personal honor is distinct from his ability to perform the duties of the office) or his long term reputation, that will not require creating a faction and declaring war on the incumbent and will not earn for the opponents of the incumbent a reputation for seeking to undermine the foundations of the society. John Bearkiller want a way to impeach a director. I want a way that can be applied to any officer at any level. I have a nasty feeling that the culture of tha SCA will not support such a mechanism, and that elections will not serve anyway. I have known officers who genuinely do not care if they are replaced and so throw their office open to bid from replacements every year or so. Unfortunately, such officers rarely need to be replaced. On the other hand, I have known officers how always have 'one last thing to do' before they will consider retireing. These are the ones who get really upset when the populace turns and boots them out. I have never seen term limits work effectively. Perhaps the Masons scheme of rotating the offices around the eligible members every year would work better. I don't know, but I believe we need to come up with a proposal. Fiacha From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Sat Oct 28 14:47:09 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Rooscc@AOL.COM Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 14:16:02 -0400 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Carole C. Roos" Subject: Alysoun: removal mechanisms To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Fiacha frames the problem very well. One single mechanism may not work for all sorts of officers--the board is different from linked officers like seneschals, and landed barons and royalty are yet another case. The linked officers are my greatest concern because there are more of them and they are the body most likely to produce future board members. In previous postings I used the term "job description" but I don't think this is accurate. I'm after "attitude shaping," not a list of duties. A local seneschal reported to his regional for the first time and was told that his job was to get reports in and not to bring the regional any problems. This is the attitude I want to change. Offices on the local level are as much a learning experience as learning to fight, to do heraldry, calligraphy or embroidery. This is where we develop good regional and kingdom officers. The local officers are being trained, unconsciously in most cases, by the people in their group and by their superiors. The closer the expectations of the group and of the superior the more effective that training will be. Putting the emphasis on the job rather than the personality of the job-holder from the very start will work toward depersonalizing the situation. Think of every position in the chain as being between two other links up to the board level. Each position has responsibilities both ways and should be accountable both ways. Both sides of the link should have a sense of shared goals, not conflicting ones. In other words what local seneschals expect from their regional should be fairly congruent with what the kingdom seneschal expects from the regional. We can tie these expectations to concretes by putting in an evaluation on the doomsday report (or more frequently if necessary). The local group members get to put their complaints or praise on the local officer's report. The local officer is bound to send them along with his or her own comments--excuses, plans to adjust, etc. The local officers do the same for regional, regional for kingdom, kingdom for society. The superior discusses these evaluations with their subordinates--they should not disappear into a black hole. This evaluation system has three advantages. 1. It provides the opportunity for people to consider how well the job is being handled--strengths and weaknesses. 2. It documents problems, hopefully before they become major. 3. It provides an information pool for selecting people for higher offices. In terms of impeachment, the second advantage is the most relevant. The officer in question would already know where his or her weak areas were and would have already been asked to address them. Failure can be presented in the terms chosen by that particular officer--if, for example, he had previously pleaded lack of time, this would be the face-saving way out. Not every one who tries a craft or takes up arms is successful at it--but this is not a judgment on that person's total worth. The same is true in holding an office. We need to keep that learning dimension there and build an atmosphere where it is easy for people to admit that this is not their thing, that they gave it a try but would do better serving in another capacity. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Sun Oct 29 21:39:46 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Serwyl@AOL.COM Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995 21:04:56 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Chuck Hack Subject: Various Topics To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Greetings from Serwyl, Re Bill(?)'s comment on Alysoun: Membership 4. You state that you believe multiple incorporation will ease IRS reporting because under the current system delays in reporting from the Kingdoms to Corporate endangers the whole society. I discussed the reporting situation with the corporate exchequer. She had two important points: 1. The extensions we have requested in filing are both legal and quite normal for a non profit that requires reporting from the lower levels to be compiled and sent on to the IRS. the IRS has no problem with this so why should we? The important thing is that the filings are correct. 2. The reports sent up from the Kingdoms were NOT correct. Every single Kingdom had it's return sent back at least once. A number were sent back twice and at least one had to be sent back three times before it could be properly reconciled. It is true that corporate could get its' taxes in earlier if we had completely separate incorporations for the Kingdoms, but at what cost? As was pointed out in another post, the IRS is likely to come after affiliated corporation if one has a problem. Re Hossein's comments to Myrdin re election of officers: Hossein, I don't favor election of Board members by the general membership either, does this make me pro-tyranny? :) Actually, I was not aware that we elected the president now. I always thought we elected the members of the electoral college, who actually do the voting (and are not bound to accept the mandate of the electorate). That aside, I have concerns about elections both on the local level (which I've aired here before) and at the higher levels. A self selecting board does have advantages. The Board in the past has attempted to choose people >from a wide variety of backgrounds and weed out those with hidden agendas. I'm not so sure what the benefits are in electing Board members. Apply the same reason my suggestions about feedback meetings at Kingdoms events after Board meetings got shot down, apathy mostly, and you have the same problem with elections. Unless there is some hot topic under discussion, there will be very few people who care one way or another about who is on the Board. Most people (in my experience) just don't want to be bothered with it. Re Morgan and Fiacha on Surcharges: I know you think we should table the surcharge discussion for now, but the concept of a surcharge is central to the decision about what it is to be a member and whether there will be a difference between individuals who pay regular dues to the corporation and those who do not. On the other hand, if we dicide to concentrate on the actual structure of the corporation (one corp vs multiple corps etc.) we can probably put off debate on the actual funding mechanisms for a bit. Re Galleron's suggestions on the duties of the Chair/Vice chair. Your suggestions make a good statring point. I think that we should use these as a base and see how they work. If the system doesn't provide the order we need we can change it later. The fact is that we need to get organized now. Therefore I move we accept Gallerons proposal on the duties of the Chair. Re Alysouns comments to Fiacha on removal of officers: >One single mechanism may not work for all sorts of officers--the board is >different from linked officers like seneschals, and landed barons and royalty >are yet another case. >The linked officers are my greatest concern because there are more of them >and they are the body most likely to produce future board members. I agree, there will have to be a different method of accountability for linked officers and Board members. A single system would be nice but probably not workable. >In previous postings I used the term "job description" but I don't think this >is accurate. I'm after "attitude shaping," not a list of duties. A local >seneschal reported to his regional for the first time and was told that his >job was to get reports in and not to bring the regional any problems. This >is the attitude I want to change. Just remamber attitudes are a lot harder to change than job desciptions! >Think of every position in the chain as being between two other links up to >the board level. Each position has responsibilities both ways and should be >accountable both ways. Both sides of the link should have a sense of shared >goals, not conflicting ones. In other words what local seneschals expect from >their regional should be fairly congruent with what the kingdom seneschal >expects from the regional. >We can tie these expectations to concretes by putting in an evaluation on the >doomsday report (or more frequently if necessary). The local group members >get to put their complaints or praise on the local officer's report. The >local officer is bound to send them along with his or her own >comments--excuses, plans to adjust, etc. The local officers do the same for >regional, regional for kingdom, kingdom for society. The superior discusses >these evaluations with their subordinates--they should not disappear into a >black hole. >This evaluation system has three advantages. 1. It provides the opportunity >for people to consider how well the job is being handled--strengths and >weaknesses. 2. It documents problems, hopefully before they become major. 3. >It provides an information pool for selecting people for higher offices. OK, I think I could like this idea, but I want to think about it some more. The only way I could see anything approaching consistant feedback is if it was done on a regular basis (either quarterly, annually or semi annually) for all officers at once. On a local level, one meeting before the report filing deadline, the local officers present commentary forms to the populace. Comments are made on the forms (which would probably be standardized for each office), and appended to the quarterly etc report to the officer's superior. The Kingdom officers in turn would send forms to the local officers to be filled out and returned, and so on up the ladder. The main drawback of course is the paperwork. Of course, my employer does this and so do many employers, schools, etc. and with success. For Board members the situation is difficult. A Board member does not have a specified constituancy and so there is no particluar group he or she is answerable to. But as we saw with the pay for play issue, it's hard to get even a small % of the membership to sign an impeachment request. Options we have include lowering the membership petition levels, allowing for impeachment by the IKAC, or maybe a majority of the Crowns and Kingdom Seneschals acting in concert. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 02:19:12 1995 Return-Path: X-Sender: ddfr@best.com (Unverified) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Approved-By: David Friedman Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995 22:44:00 -0800 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: David Friedman Subject: Cariadoc:Re: Tyrany in the society To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Here are some options for impeachment with teeth: 1. The present system, except that the result of a successful petition drive is that the named Board member(s) is (are) removed, and may not serve again for the next two years. 2. Impeachment is, as in the U.S. system, equivalent to indictment, not conviction. A Board member may be impeached by any of: A. A majority of the crowns B. A majority of the seneschals C. Petition as currently D. 5% of the peers. The result of impeachment is a mail ballot in the next T.I. (or maybe kingdom newsletters). If more people vote to remove than to retain, he is out. If you are worried about the cost, you might require that whoever organizes the impeachment (i.e. collects signatures or whatever) pay for the necessary half or quarter page at ordinary advertising rates. To keep the ins from controlling communication (probably not a problem in the future due to the spread of the net, but let's be cautious here), if impeachment succeeds, the Corporation has to be willing to sell the supporters and opponents space at cost in the publications. If the corporation wishes to give free space to one side (the impeached director, or those he names as his supporters), it must give equal space to the other (whoever organized the impeachment petitions). Here is an additional wrinkle, to deal with a situation where the "bad guys" are a majority, and can replace an impeached member with a new supporter. An impeachment petition may include the name of a replacement Board member. If it does, the ballot includes separate items for impeaching the present member and replacing him with the designated substitute. If impeachment succeeds but more people oppose the substitute than support him, the empty chair is filled by the Board's normal procedures. " using Tibor's example of a group with 300 members, if we make the number of signatures too low, one annoyed shire could really be The Mouse That Roared." (Morgan, I think) I believe that in the mineral hobby the rule for nominations from the floor (as opposed to nominations by the nominating committee--this is how they control their self-perpetuating elite) is of the form "X% of the members, including at least one member each from Y% of the groups). David/Cariadoc David Friedman ddfr@best.com From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 02:26:25 1995 Return-Path: X-Sender: ddfr@best.com (Unverified) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Approved-By: David Friedman Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995 22:43:52 -0800 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: David Friedman Subject: Cariadoc: Re: Serwyl: re my proposal To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L >Greetings from Serwyl. > >I aplogize for the infrequncy of posting, Me too. >Re Cariadocs proposal: >Your model is based on the theory that the Kingdoms are going to be more >responsive and look out for their members more efficiently than a central >corporation. I think that, on the whole, smaller volunteer organizations work better. That does not mean they work well. I can see several possible solutions to the sorts of problems you (and Finnvairr, and others) raise. 1. A supreme court, to which disputes between kingdoms and their members or between incorporated kingdoms and the SCA Inc. could be appealed. 2. Requirements that a group (kingdom or local) have some minimal amount of democratic control in order to be accepted as a member of the SCA Inc. 3. Permitting any local group to be independent if its members want it to be. An independent group could still be in allegiance to a king, and presumably almost all of them (except Myrkfaelinn) would be. But it would select its own officers, control its own money, and have the option of breaking from its kingdom to either function on its own or offer allegiance to a different kingdom. 4. Permitting an individual to be a member of the SCA Inc. without any tie to a kingdom, or of a kingdom without any tie to a group. >Like Finnvarr, I favor a less radical approach to restructuring, but I would >still like to see more discussion on your model. The tax and liability >issues are interesting, but would we be able under the current laws to >transfer items of regalia technically owned by the Corporation to a newly >formed Kingdom incorporation that may not have a tax exempt, non profit >status? My suggestion would be for the Corporation to provide the regalia to the kingdom as a long term loan. The kingdom could raise money to buy the regalia at the lowest reasonable price as convenient--thus providing a little extra fundraising for the Corporation. This assumes the kingdom is not a 501(c)3; it it were, the Corporation could simply give it the regalia. >You mention the option of groups changing alliegences if they do not feel >proprly supported as a 'final sanction'. Wouldn't this also apply to entire >Kingdoms? As an example: if a Kingdom found itself at odds with the umbrella >organization over some emotional issue (say fencing or archery peerages), >then that Kingdom might be more likely to try and break with the umbrella >organization rather than try to work their problems out. After all, they are >already incorporated and under your system are getting little real support >from the central organization. Is the potential for fragmentation really >what we want? I think the threat of secession is useful as one way of limiting just how much the central organization can offend the membership of a kingdom. On the other hand, a kingdom that secedes can no longer use the SCA's name, which would be a significant inconvenience and embarassment--enough so that, combined with the symbolic issue of wanting to be part of the same community, I would not expect secession to be a step taken lightly. For what it is worth, the mineral collecting hobby has had one case of a regional seceding (actually, an unapproved split in a regional with one faction seceding) over the past forty or fifty years. They eventually came back. >On multiple memberships- Under your plan, a Kingdom would probably have it's >own membership fees to cover it's administrative costs, newsletters etc. Is >that a complication we want as well? It seems all around to entail more >paperwork for the corp, the kingdom, and the individual member. Suppose a kingdom is separately incorporated. It takes care of its own membership records, costs, newsletters, etc. It pays a small per/member fee, perhaps a dollar, to the central Corporation as its contribution to administrative costs (I think it is fifty cents in the mineral hobby). In addition, either it pays the central organization for a certain number of T.I. subscriptions, or individuals in it subscribe on their own. The central organization has essentially no paperwork for those members. If the kingdom buys T.I. subscriptions, then the kingdom sends mailing labels to whomever distributes T.I.. The kingdom reports the number of its members when it sends in its check. If T.I. is handled by separate subscription, then the only central administrative burden for those members is keeping track of their T.I. subscriptions. One of the advantages of this structure is that it gets the work down to where the people are. It is easier for a kingdom to get ten hours a month of volunteer labor than for the Corporation to get a hundred and twenty hours a month of volunteer labor. Of course, if we go to using an Association Management Firm, the kingdom has the option of asking them to handle its membership etc. if it wants to. David/Cariadoc David Friedman ddfr@best.com From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 15:07:03 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1237 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 14:18:50 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: Galleron: Impeaching the Board (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Galleron. -- Tibor Please forward to GC Galleron here Serwyl and Cariadoc both mention impeachment by majorities of the Crowns or Kingdom Seneschals as alternatives to a petition of 10% of the membership to impeach the Board. If I read my Corpora correctly, III.c.3 already provides that either a majority of current Crowns or a majority of current Kingdom seneschals can trigger impeachment proceedings. Of course, the Board can vote not to impeach. Cariadoc's proposal to put impeachment to a vote of the membership has some merit. So would putting the matter in the hands of some sort of SCA Supreme court. I would be reluctant to put the power of removal in the Crowns as they are currently selected, and without greater checks on their arbitrary power. Impeachment is a pretty extreme measure. Perhaps we also need something a bit less like a nuclear weapon: say, a vote of no confidence, with lower thresholds. During the late unpleasantness, I suspect that the petitioners would have had more success getting seven Crowns or seven Seneschals or 10% of the members to sign on to a vote of no confidence than a motion to impeach. Will McLean/Galleron de Cressy From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 15:41:12 1995 Return-Path: Priority: normal X-Mailer: ExpressNet/SMTP v1.1.5 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Approved-By: Roy Gathercoal Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 10:10:50 -0800 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Roy Gathercoal Organization: George Fox College Subject: Re: SCAGC-L Digest - 27 Oct 1995 to 28 Oct 1995 To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L What Alysoun proposes here sounds much like the "Monday papers" that Wernher von Braun established at the Marshall Spaceflight Center. Essentially, each manager was to prepare a short (less than one page) note each monday and give it to their supervisory manager. This person would write comments on the page and send it to the project manager, who would write comments and send it to Braun. Braun would write comments, if necessary (either in answer to a question, or with a request for other action, or of praise, etc. and send it to the project manager, who would do the same and send it to the appropriate manager, etc. until it reached the originating manager by the end of the week. I believe this would be good for the SCA. I would structure it with a couple of parameters in place: 1. When someone got these in the mail, they would commit to answering them right away, instead of shelving them for some later time, in no case being kept longer than a week (and it would become quite apparent where any hold up was. . .) 2. People treat these as comments, and notes, instead of reports 3. It is made very clear that this is an additional mode of communication, and not a replacement for more thoughtful, contemplative and carefully constructed reports. I believe it would be reasonable to do this once a month, and to allow a month for the process (branch officer to principality/regional to kingdom, to society and back). It may be that we should institute this within each kingdom, with a summary going from kingdom officers to the society officer. In any case, the idea is not to generate useless paperwork reports, but to encourage real communication about needs, questions and ideas. It is important that officers at every level recall constantly that they are there to serve people, not to run things. This sort of process would do much to increase the accountability of officers at every level--far more effectively than instituting elections. If people are unwilling to handwrite a page a month to ask questions and communicate with others, then they should not be pretending to be doing anything other than occupying an office for the sake of saying that it is occupied. This is a radical idea. I can already hear moans from one side saying "what! More paperwork! More reports! More meddling in local affairs by corporate porkers!" and from another side crying "too much work already for the kingdom and society officers!" and from still another moaning " if local officers can't be bothered to offer one fill-in-the-blanks sheet each quarter already, what chance have we of getting a page a month --that they would actually have to think about!" But this sort of radical solution seems to be more narrowly focussed at addressing the problems at hand (failure to communicate effectively, arrogance in officers at all levels, accountability of one to others) than do many of the more radical restructuring solutions (cut 'em loose and let 'em go belly up if they can't stand on their own!) If implemented conscientiously, this would dramatically change the way we think about working with each other. Gareth -- From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 15:56:09 1995 Return-Path: Encoding: 32 TEXT X-Mailer: Microsoft Mail V3.0 Approved-By: "Potter, Michael" Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 13:15:00 PST Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Potter, Michael" Subject: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Hossein and Tibor, I do feel that the way a message is presented is important. Although Hossein indicated that he doesn't care what reaction his postings have, I think that if we want to arrive at a consensus and have a chance to convince to Board to carry out our recommendations, care must be taken to tone down the emotional component of our discussions. I can give an easy example. Hossein used "Stalinist" in one of his posts. Although my name does not directly indicate it, I'm half Ukrainian and the first on that side to be born in North America. Stalinist has much greater meaning to me than might be expected and that can block understanding the points that Hossein was trying to make (I look at our current situation and find so little link to a "Stalinist" organization that the rest of his post is lost). As far as I can tell, Hossein's main point is that a system of checks and balances is needed urgently because of the tyranny (abuses of power) that occurs. I still disagree that the examples cited are "tyranny" except on a smaller scale, and I still feel that the SCA does have a system of checks and balances on the local level. I'm even less likely to agree with him the more strong and personal his language becomes, which would be a shame should he be right. regards, Michael G. Potter Sir Myrdin the Just ps - I'm getting married Nov. 4 and will be in France on my honeymoon the week after. I'm sure it'll be understood if I vanished during that time. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 17:08:08 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Mark Waks Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 16:23:38 EST Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Waks Subject: Re: Galleron: Impeaching the Board (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <199510301918.OAA09858@abel.math.harvard.edu> (message from Mark Schuldenfrei on Mon, 30 Oct 1995 14:18:50 -0500) Galleron writes: >Impeachment is a pretty extreme measure. Perhaps we also need something a bit >less like a nuclear weapon: say, a vote of no confidence, with lower >thresholds. During the late unpleasantness, I suspect that the petitioners >would have had more success getting seven Crowns or seven Seneschals or 10% >of the members to sign on to a vote of no confidence than a motion to >impeach. Bingo; I agree with this entirely. Impeachment tends to be interpreted by many people as a criticism of an individual (fairly or unfairly), and like it or not, the SCA has a really hard time dealing with that. I would be *far* more interested in seeing a mechanism by which the membership could override *actions* of the Board (and/or officers) -- I think it would be more likely to actually function. It would provide a check on mistakes in judgement, while putting the personal rebuke slightly more into the background. Yes, this is a *very* complicated thing to try and implement; in particular, I wouldn't be astonished to find out that it runs afoul of some of the non-membership-corporation laws. But if it could work, I think it could be useful while not being quite so nuclear... -- Justin Just mulling on the notion... Random Quote du Jour: "39. I was not born in the usual way; I was created by Disney Studios." -- from "New Improved Delusions" From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 17:10:32 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Mark Waks Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 16:32:27 EST Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Waks Subject: Re: SCAGC-L Digest - 27 Oct 1995 to 28 Oct 1995 To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <752009.ensmtp@foxmail.gfc.edu> (message from Roy Gathercoal on Mon, 30 Oct 1995 10:10:50 -0800) Gareth writes: >If people are unwilling to handwrite >a page a month to ask questions and communicate with others, then they should >not be pretending to be doing anything other than occupying an office for the >sake of saying that it is occupied. I don't buy it, at least as a general mechanism. For the Seneschalate specifically, I *might* be willing to contemplate it; for most of the officers, though, I think the above comment is just false. Look -- most SCA offices are not (or shouldn't be) primarily, or even largely, about bureaucracy. One could be an effective Chronicler, Marshall, Chatelaine, or what-have-you without *ever* dealing interactively with the higher levels of the bureaucracy. How can you imply that a Marshall is simply a place-holder if he doesn't write a page a month? (And what do you do when it gets far harder to find a Knight Marshall? I know plenty of people who can do a job like that, but will refuse if it involves significant paperwork...) This is an interesting idea, and for officers *whose job is interacting with a hierarchy* it might make sense. But don't carry it too far -- we already have far too much hierarchy, most of it wholly unnecessary... -- Justin Random Quote du Jour: "And then there's Magneto in the Bronze Age. 'Pharoah hates us...shuns us... because we are DIFFERENT. I must DESTROY Pharoah's army with my mutant ability to cause RABBIT FUR to attract small bits of PAPYRUS in order to make Egypt SAFE for man-which-is-superior!'" -- Steven desJardins From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 21:11:06 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Approved-By: Nigel Haslock Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 17:27:09 -0800 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Nigel Haslock Subject: Grim:Re: Impeachment - FiachaI (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Grimmund Blackwing On Fri, 27 Oct 1995, Nigel Haslock wrote: > John Bearkiller want a way to impeach a director. I want a way that can > be applied to any officer at any level. [..snip..] I have > never seen term limits work effectively. Perhaps the Masons scheme of > rotating the offices around the eligible members every year would work > better. I don't know, but I believe we need to come up with a proposal. > Well Met! I don't know how it works elsewhere, but the Midrealm allow officers a two year term, with an option for a third if the officer and their supervising officer are both willing. This seems to work pretty well; in our local group, it means that every 2-3 years, we all switch hats-allowing newer members to try an office (usually as a deputy for some OJT) and allowing older members some down-time before we put themb back in harness. There is no equivalent system for the baronage, however. This has caused problems in Jaravellier at least once; twice if you count the current problem of who will replace the current Barron of seven years. The Barony of Wester Seas (Caid, MKA Hawaii) is Palatine, switching every six months via alternating heavy list and A&S pentathalon. They like it, but I don't know how effective that would be for board members. Removing officers locally involves their Kingdom supervisor-we had to go that route about 4 years back, when our then-herald decided to do something he shouldn't. It got a bit ugly-but he would not respond to prompting, persuasion, or rule citations showing he was in the wrong. At other times, people have chearfully yielded to public pressure-or rules citations-and moderated their behavior. It goes both ways-usually these things can be done civilly, but sometimes it takes brute political force. So it seems that what we need is a brute-force tool to use on officers, from local officers to the BoD, when politeness and consensus fail. The tool that we use on anyone below the BoD is appeal to their supervisor; since the BoD supervises itself, success in this venue seems unlikley. I like the proposed two-tier system, where the BoD gets an oversite commision who's only role is to impeach/remove BoD members or perhaps disolve the BoD and appoint a trustee while elections are held to replace them. Given the generally high levels of political apathy I've seen on the part of most members, and the painfully slow disemination of information among those who do not have access to email, this may be the only workable solution. I think requirements for large percentages of the population do do something are unreasonable, given the low population density,the slow propagation of news, and the generall shunning (at least in my observations) of anythign related to *politics* (spit!). Just my tuppence- Grimmund (the only Grimmund-no byname!) Northshield, Midrealm From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 21:56:26 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1296 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 21:22:46 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: Re: Galleron: Impeaching the Board To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Bill Sommerfeld (Guillaume Barbarouge) Forwarded message: From sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com Mon Oct 30 15:42 EST 1995 Please forward if you think it appropriate: Impeachment is a pretty extreme measure. Perhaps we also need something a bit less like a nuclear weapon: say, a vote of no confidence, with lower thresholds. During the late unpleasantness, I suspect that the petitioners would have had more success getting seven Crowns or seven Seneschals or 10% of the members to sign on to a vote of no confidence than a motion to impeach. Perhaps this is looking at it backwards; perhaps we need a periodic "vote of confidence" rather than a "vote of no confidence". A small non-SCA organization I am a member of has a VOC on a regular basis. If the current leader fails the VOC, a new leader is chosen. Abstentions by active members in the VOC are counted the same as "no" votes, though that feature probably doesn't scale to an organization the size of the global SCA. However, a question on membership renewal forms of the form "Do you think the current SCA leadership is doing a good job? [] yes [] no" might be a simple and efficient way to measure the "silent majority". - Bill From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 22:11:21 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1090 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 21:30:46 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: Re: SCAGC-L Digest - 27 Oct 1995 to 28 Oct 1995 To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <9510302132.AA27506@dsd.camb.inmet.com> from "Mark Waks" at Oct 30, 95 04:32:27 pm Greetings from Tibor. Justin quotes Gareth: >If people are unwilling to handwrite >a page a month to ask questions and communicate with others, then they should >not be pretending to be doing anything other than occupying an office for the >sake of saying that it is occupied. And answers: I don't buy it, at least as a general mechanism. For the Seneschalate specifically, I *might* be willing to contemplate it; for most of the officers, though, I think the above comment is just false. Agreed. Take my own small position: as Baronial Pursuivant. If you check the laws of Corpora, and the East, the truth is: I don't have to do a damn thing but exist, and buy a membership. I do, I hope, a fair bit more than that for my Barony. Exchanging paperwork with my superiors in the Kingdom might improve a working relationship, but will not provide one. In this actual case, this paper load would merely add to overhead, instead of easing my actual (self-imposed) workload. (Not to imply that I don't have a cordial and valuable relationship with my superiors.) Tibor From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Mon Oct 30 23:12:15 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 8830 Approved-By: Joseph Heck Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 21:28:57 -0600 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Joseph Heck Subject: Morgan: Various Comments (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Morgan, > > Hello, all. It has been suggested that I reduce my postings, especially as I am > not on the GC and many who are are posting much less frequently. So despite > Alysoun's request for single-topic postings, I'm back to the general ones: > > Cariadoc suggested, in two messages: > > >> 3. Permitting any local group to be independent if its members want it to > >> be. An independent group could still be in allegiance to a king, and > >> presumably almost all of them (except Myrkfaelinn) would be. But it would > >> select its own officers, control its own money, and have the option of > >> breaking from its kingdom to either function on its own or offer allegiance > >> to a different kingdom. > > This could be VERY complicated. What if a group in the middle of the Midrealm > wanted to associate with Calontir, or The West? A number of years ago, we found > that the Chicago area had the requisite population and number of peers to be a > principality -- could it have gone independent at that point, and what would > this do to the rest of the Midrealm? > > I guess this concept is not as clear to me, and I would like to know what > restrictions, if any would be on the options. For example, a minimum time for > the change, so it's not something one Seneschal or Baronetcy does if ticked off > at the particular rulers? > > >> 4. Permitting an individual to be a member of the SCA Inc. without any tie > >> to a kingdom, or of a kingdom without any tie to a group. > > I do like this idea, because it allows people who are peripheral members of one > sort or another -- mostly inactive, or like me living between two groups and > primarily playing with a third -- to have the requisite membership status > without being stuck in a group by a twist of geography. It also allows people > who are temporarily misplaced to retain official ties to their old Kingdom, or > not be forced to accept ties to the new one. > > >> My suggestion would be for the Corporation to provide the regalia to the > >> kingdom as a long term loan. The kingdom could raise money to buy the > >> regalia at the lowest reasonable price as convenient--thus providing a > >> little extra fundraising for the Corporation. > > The loan could be at the token-$1.00-per-year level, with the "balloon" being > the agreed cost of the items (less previously-paid amounts), payable on or > before a certain date. Alternatively, the Kingdom could come up with its own, > new regalia. Some pieces (like the ancient Crowns of Calontir) have significant > historical value and would be purchased by the Kingdom, but other items do not > and can/should be replaced by the artisans of the Kingdom. > > >> Of course, if we go to using an Association Management Firm, the kingdom > >> has the option of asking them to handle its membership etc. if it wants to. > > I would presume that the Kingdoms could choose their own. > > >> The result of impeachment is a mail ballot in the next T.I. (or maybe > >> kingdom newsletters). If more people vote to remove than to retain, he is > >> out. > > Problem with timelag and space hassles. There is already the impossibility of > posting Board minutes in T.I. because it publishes a week after the Board > Meetings. Kingdom newsletters are better, but many already face space > constraints. I would suggest, in combination with requiring the impraching > petitioner to pay some or all of the cost, that they pay for single-page inserts > that can easily be pulled out, folded, stamped, and mailed. This would allow > most of a 8.5"x11" sheet for information, with the ballot on 1/3 of the back and > 1/3 for the address of whoever is going to count them. > > >> Here is an additional wrinkle, to deal with a situation where the "bad > >> guys" are a majority, and can replace an impeached member with a new > >> supporter. An impeachment petition may include the name of a replacement > >> Board member. If it does, the ballot includes separate items for impeaching > >> the present member and replacing him with the designated substitute. If > >> impeachment succeeds but more people oppose the substitute than support > >> him, the empty chair is filled by the Board's normal procedures. > > Should we limit the suggested Board member to one already on the proposed list? > At the least, it should include all the usual information about the person: > awards, offices, Kingdom of residence, etc. > > ========================= > > Serwyl is correct about the election of the President -- and in at least once > situation, the person who had the majority of the popular vote did not receive > the majority fothe electoral votes. It was before my time, maybe someone who is > more familiar with current American political history can answer? > > >> I know you think we should table the surcharge discussion for now, but the > >> concept of a surcharge is central to the decision about what it is to be a > >> member and whether there will be a difference between individuals who pay > >> regular dues to the corporation and those who do not. > > I think it is a distraction right now. First, you need to decide the form of > the corporation/franchise, then you can decide about the memberships. I only > wanted to point out that many organizations have apolicy of a surcharge to > nonmembers, or a financial benefit to members. > > With regard to the feedback sugestion: > > >> For Board members the situation is difficult. A Board member does not have a > >> specified constituancy and so there is no particluar group he or she is > >> answerable to. But as we saw with the pay for play issue, it's hard to get > >> even a small % of the membership to sign an impeachment request. > > Aren't the Board members assigned to be the overseer/contact for various > Kingdoms and officers? Could this be considered the constituency? > > > Alysoun observed: > > >> A local seneschal reported to his regional for the first time and was told > >> that his job was to get reports in and not to bring the regional any > >> problems. This is the attitude I want to change. > > Never mind the attitude, I think you need to change the regional. > > > Fiacha said: > > >> Given the general objection to elections, propose a means for replacing > >> an incumbent that will not be seen as a personal attack on the incumbent > >> * * * or his long term reputation, ..... > > Put a time limin on service. Then there is no problem; people know the person > can no longer served until a previously-set "timeout" has passed. The > justification would be to prevent burnout, particularly at Kingdom level. > > >> John Bearkiller want a way to impeach a director. I want a way that can > >> be applied to any officer at any level. > > Yep. > > >> I have known officers who genuinely do not care if they are replaced and > >> so throw their office open to bid from replacements every year or so. > >> Unfortunately, such officers rarely need to be replaced. > > Sometimes, they just want to be sure they are still doing a job that people > like; usually, if people are unhappy, they will volunteer to replace the person. > > >> On the other hand, I have known officers how always have 'one > >> last thing to do' before they will consider retireing. These are the ones > >> who get really upset when the populace turns and boots them out. > > They are also usually the ones who burn out a year or more before they are > finally replaced. > > Me > > We do that at Events too -- when there is a feast fee, if you help > Me > > serve or cleanup, it is refunded. > > >> This sounds like exception behaviour on the part of your branch. > > No, I have seen it elsewhere, and not just in the Midrealm. Sometimes it is > more publicized than others. > > >> I still fail to make a connection between cnetral office funding and > >> local operations that finance events. > > That I will grant. But the memberships we hold are eventually trackable back to > the SCA, Inc., not the local groups or Kingdoms, so under that scheme I see no > business objection to the surcharge going back to SCA, Inc. > > {NOTE: I do have some objections to reasons, amount, and universality of > application, but those situations are not being raised here.} > > > ---= Morgan > > > > > > > > > |\ THIS is the cutting edge of technology! > 8+%%%%%%%%I=================================================--- > |/ Morgan Cely Cain * 72672.2312@compuserve.com > > -- joe (314) 882-5000 ccjoe@showme.missouri.edu University of Missouri - Columbia "with a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!" -- Calvin ccjoe From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Tue Oct 31 10:26:25 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Rooscc@AOL.COM Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 09:53:31 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Carole C. Roos" Subject: Alysoun: pressure on board To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Greetings from Alysoun I like Gareth's idea of the comments coming back down since a common complaint about reports is that there is so little feedback. Monthly seems too often, though. Once or at most twice a year should be sufficient unless there are problems and when there are problems, a local group probably would like to make their comments more frequently (quarterly, say) to make sure all levels are on top of the difficulty. I think the thing should go for all linked officers once a year. Even Marshals sometimes poop out by being undependable (he said he'd be here!), etc. In my ideal world the Doomsday would be a group project on the local level--this would make the paperwork less of an isolated burden on the officers and encourage all the people in a group to stop and reflect on the whole--how are we doing, where are we going, what needs improvement, etc. And this does not have to be a boring thing--you bring the report, I'll bring the pizza. I like the no confidence idea. If we can strengthen the officer links, the kingdom seneschals will have the assurance that they are speaking for the people and that the people will back them up. I don't mean to be excluding royalty because I do think they have an important role to play, but the key thing for checking the board lies with the administrative. Look at this way: if the board should ignore or depose a crown, the kingdom is what suffers. Ignoring or deposing a great officer hurts the corporation. (You want what report when?) I have never seen an organization willing to advertise internal difficulties by allowing impeachment forms in an official publication--but some may do so. I would not want to count on this. Again strong links of communication through the officers is the more sure route. In a crisis a kingdom seneschal should be able to contact all regionals and all regionals their locals within a week to a week and a half. This is personal one-to-one over the phone contact--much more effective than a net message because individual questions can be answered, etc. The kingdom seneschal would know within a month what support was there and would be able to advise the crown. Crown and kingdom seneschals would also consult with their peers in other kingdoms. Well before the next board meeting, a position could be taken and would have teeth behind it. This kind of strength isn't something we get by waving a pen over a piece of paper. We can add a line to the Doomsday, or change a number in the bylaws, but that won't do it. Support has to be built. For people to support their great officers they have to feel that their officers support them, and really care about the ideas and concerns coming from the local level. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Tue Oct 31 12:12:02 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Mark Waks Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 11:25:08 EST Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Waks Subject: Re: Grim:Re: Impeachment - FiachaI (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: (message from Nigel Haslock on Mon, 30 Oct 1995 17:27:09 -0800) Fiacha posts for Grimmund, who is quoting Fiacha: >Perhaps the Masons scheme of > rotating the offices around the eligible members every year would work > better. I don't know, but I believe we need to come up with a proposal. Which reminds me -- I should probably clarify this, just in case anyone doesn't know what he's talking about. The more-or-less standard Masonic system (at least in these parts) works like this. You have a "line" of officers, usually about eight or ten. Each officer has certain prescribed duties, both "in-game" and "out-of-game". (In this case, for example, each officer has specific ritual that he is resonsible for. In addition, eg, the Stewards are responsible for setting up the hall for dinner, and the Junior Warden is typically responsible for arranging the catering.) In a healthy lodge, the line moves up, one seat per year. You enter at the bottom, with very little ritual and responsibilities, and end up as Master after a number of years, essentially the executive responsible for the well-being of the Lodge, as well as the center of pretty much all of the ritual. The upper offices are elected by the membership; the lower ones generally are appointed by the Master. The result is partly self-perpetuating, but with an annual democratic check on the process. This is fairly typical -- Masonry tends to invest enormous power in the Master, but the crucial steps are mostly democratic. (Eg, electing the high officers, and new members of the Lodge.) If the membership loses faith in the line, they can boot out the upper officers (and, by association, the lower ones); this is rare, but happens. Note that there are exceptions to this pattern. Arguably the two most important officers in the Lodge, the Secretary and Treasurer, typically are *not* part of the line. They are annually elected, but tend to hold their positions for many years, often decades. This provides some stability, which is useful. The Master is unquestionably the most *powerful* member of the Lodge, but the Secretary is often the one who really knows what's going on. That's the basics, anyway. I don't know if any of this is really applicable to the SCA, but it's a reasonably functional system to examine... -- Justin Or, in this case, Wor. Mark Waks Master, Hammatt Ocean Lodge, Saugus, MA Random Quote du Jour: "Honk if your horn is broken." From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Tue Oct 31 22:24:53 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Serwyl@AOL.COM Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 21:52:51 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Chuck Hack Subject: Serwyl: Response to Cariadoc's Proposal To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Greetings from Serwyl, Ok, let me get this straight: I am responding to Cariadoc on his response to my response on his proposal to incorporate Kingdoms separately under a weak umbrella organization. Whew! Anyway, I'm having a hard time framing my objections to the plan, but here's a start. >>Re Cariadocs proposal: >>Your model is based on the theory that the Kingdoms are going to be more >>responsive and look out for their members more efficiently than a central >>corporation. >I think that, on the whole, smaller volunteer organizations work better. >That does not mean they work well. Whether small organizations work better in your experience or not, the question is whether a gem society model is best for us. I'm not sure that it is. More importantly, I doubt we could sell it to the Board, which is one of the reasons I support a restructuring of the current corporate structure rather than a complete recreation. >>You mention the option of groups changing alliegences if they do not feel >>proprly supported as a 'final sanction'. Wouldn't this also apply to entire >>Kingdoms? As an example: if a Kingdom found itself at odds with the >>umbrella >>organization over some emotional issue (say fencing or archery peerages), >>then that Kingdom might be more likely to try and break with the umbrella >>organization rather than try to work their problems out. After all, they >>are >>already incorporated and under your system are getting little real support >>from the central organization. Is the potential for fragmentation really >>what we want? >I think the threat of secession is useful as one way of limiting just how >much the central organization can offend the membership of a kingdom. On >the other hand, a kingdom that secedes can no longer use the SCA's name, >which would be a significant inconvenience and embarassment--enough so >that, combined with the symbolic issue of wanting to be part of the same >community, I would not expect secession to be a step taken lightly. The 'Threat of secession' as a 'useful'??? way to protect the membership? Maybe I'm being paranoid here but this is not a genie I want to let out of the bottle. And I know I'm not comfortable with Kingdoms using a secession right to veto any action by the central corporation. Sometimes a corporation has to make tough decisions, and your plan would give any individual Kingdom the power to thwart both the central corporation and possibly all the other Kingdoms as well, just by the threat of secession. I suspect if our last King knew he had that threat to wield against the corporation, he would have used it. Not because he had any reason to, but just because he could. >>On multiple memberships- Under your plan, a Kingdom would probably have it's >>own membership fees to cover it's administrative costs, newsletters etc. Is >>that a complication we want as well? It seems all around to entail more >>paperwork for the corp, the kingdom, and the individual member. >Suppose a kingdom is separately incorporated. It takes care of its own >membership records, costs, newsletters, etc. It pays a small per/member >fee, perhaps a dollar, to the central Corporation as its contribution to >administrative costs (I think it is fifty cents in the mineral hobby). In >addition, either it pays the central organization for a certain number of >T.I. subscriptions, or individuals in it subscribe on their own. >The central organization has essentially no paperwork for those members. If >the kingdom buys T.I. subscriptions, then the kingdom sends mailing labels >to whomever distributes T.I.. The kingdom reports the number of its members >when it sends in its check. If T.I. is handled by separate subscription, >then the only central administrative burden for those members is keeping >track of their T.I. subscriptions. >One of the advantages of this structure is that it gets the work down to >where the people are. It is easier for a kingdom to get ten hours a month >of volunteer labor than for the Corporation to get a hundred and twenty >hours a month of volunteer labor. I don't know about your Kingdom, but I've seen little evidence that Trimaris would want to put together the structure necessary to have our own corporation. It's just too much of a hassle in terms on manpower and time. And I suspect there are other Kingdoms that feel the same. We LIKE having a central corporation take care of most of the adminitrivia so we can play the game. Another point that I made in my last post is that every kingdom had inaccurate reporting to the corporate exchequer and had to be sent back for reworking anywhere from one to three times. Left to their own devices, we would have had 13 separate corporations submitting 13 inaccurate reports to the IRS. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Tue Oct 31 23:37:00 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Serwyl@AOL.COM Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 23:02:16 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Chuck Hack Subject: Serwyl: Feedback idea, Impeachment To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Greetings from Serwyl, On the Feedback idea, Alysoun said: >I like Gareth's idea of the comments coming back down since a common >complaint about reports is that there is so little feedback. Monthly seems >too often, though. Once or at most twice a year should be sufficient unless >there are problems. >I think the thing should go for all linked officers once a year. Even >Marshals sometimes poop out by being undependable (he said he'd be here!), >etc. In my ideal world the Doomsday would be a group project on the local >level--this would make the paperwork less of an isolated burden on the >officers and encourage all the people in a group to stop and reflect on the >whole--how are we doing, where are we going, what needs improvement, etc. And >this does not have to be a boring thing--you bring the report, I'll bring the >pizza. I agree completely. And a pre set get together is just what I suggested in my post just the other day. It seems that we have several people now who like the general idea (in one form or another). Are there any dissenting voices? If so please speak up. This is a basic enough topic that we may be able to hammer it into a real proposal in a reasonably short time. Re Alysoun's Comments on Galleron (?)s No confidence vote: >I like the no confidence idea. If we can strengthen the officer links, the >kingdom seneschals will have the assurance that they are speaking for the >people and that the people will back them up. I don't mean to be excluding >royalty because I do think they have an important role to play, but the key >thing for checking the board lies with the administrative. Look at this way: >if the board should ignore or depose a crown, the kingdom is what suffers. >Ignoring or deposing a great officer hurts the corporation. (You want what >report when?) I like the no confidence vote too (gee, all this agreement in one day). I would suggest that we think about fairly low no confidence vote levels (something along the lines of Cariadoc's levels): 10% of the populace, 5% of the peers 51% of the Crowns or Kingdom Seneschals. For a binding impeachment we would want something a bit tougher, I don't know about actual populace levels, but for the Crowns and Seneschals I would like to see a majority of both the Crowns and Seneschals TOGETHER to effect a binding impeachment. My main fear being in giving Crowns too much power. They are (as a group) very transient and more prone to emotional responses to issues. Seneschals tend to be a more conservative lot, and could provide a stabilizing influence. Re publishing impeachment proceedings, Alysouns said: >I have never seen an organization willing to advertise internal difficulties >by allowing impeachment forms in an official publication. We do not like to air dirty laundry either. In fact, I believe there is an administrative policy against publishing anything that would put the SCA in a bad light, which such advertisements could be. If there were to be announcements in TI or Kingdom newsletters, they would have to be in a very dry factual format rather than political forum. Serwyl From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 00:21:17 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Greg Rose Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 23:40:29 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Greg Rose Subject: Re: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Sir Myrdin writes: >I do feel that the way a message is presented is important. Although >Hossein indicated that he doesn't care what reaction his postings have, I >think that if we want to arrive at a consensus and have a chance to convince >to Board to carry out our recommendations, care must be taken to tone down >the emotional component of our discussions. > >I can give an easy example. Hossein used "Stalinist" in one of his posts. > Although my name does not directly indicate it, I'm half Ukrainian and the >first on that side to be born in North America. Stalinist has much greater >meaning to me than might be expected and that can block understanding the >points that Hossein was trying to make (I look at our current situation and >find so little link to a "Stalinist" organization that the rest of his post >is lost). I don't use language to shock or simply to evoke emotion in this context. I am using a technical, analytic term as a historian and social scientist. "Stalinist" when used to describe a bureaucracy has a precise technical meaning. Specifically, I call a bureaucracy Stalinist when: 1. Appointments to that bureaucracy are centrally controlled and vetted; 2. Such appointments are conditioned by public acceptance by the appointee of a dominant ideology (in the case of the SCA I would call this ideology "board-centralism"); 3. Actors within the bureaucracy are expected to unquestioningly implement policy in accordance with directives from above; 4. Decisions of the central authority are presented as decisions of the entire collectivity (e.g., "democratic centralism" in its bastardized Stalinist form; in the SCA, decisions of the Society Seneschal are decisions of the "seneschallate," even if only the one person on top made the decision and forced it down the throats of her subordinates); 5. Acquiescence to orders from above is more important than either competence or efficiency when an actor is evaluated for continuation within the bureaucracy (i.e., incompetent obedience is always preferred to any challenge to the central authority, regardless of how competent the challenger is -- it's one of the reasons GOSPLAN and the Soviet economy evolved the way it did under Stalin and it's a commonplace in the SCA bureaucracy); 6. Open opposition to the central authority results in the opposing actor being purged from the bureaucracy (I recognize that we don't shoot dissenters; we yank their warrants and deny them preferment -- it's a purge mechanism, nonetheless); 7. The institutional health and security of the bureaucracy has a higher priority within the organization than the functions which the bureaucracy is supposed to perform and the benefit accruing to the social entities it is supposed to be benefiting. There is an extensive theoretical literature on precisely this question in the social sciences which has significantly affected how historians deal with totalitarianism in general and the history of the Societ Union in particular. I can provide a bibliography on request. >As far as I can tell, Hossein's main point is that a system of checks and >balances is needed urgently because of the tyranny (abuses of power) that >occurs. I still disagree that the examples cited are "tyranny" except on a >smaller scale, and I still feel that the SCA does have a system of checks >and balances on the local level. I'm even less likely to agree with him the >more strong and personal his language becomes, which would be a shame should >he be right. For God's sake, Myrdin, why should I be responsible for your emotional cathexes to the technical use of a social scientific term describing a particular form of bureaucratic development? You could have asked me what I meant, if you didn't understand the usage, but instead you chose to attack my presentation style and accuse me of appeals to emotion rather than reason. I think my analysis of the "Stalinist" tendencies of the SCA bureaucracy is extremely pertinent to the discussion of how the SCA governs itself and I find it both irritating and disheartening that a fellow GC member has no better response to a serious issue than to call me a hothead and a troublemaker. Hossein Ali Qomi (Gregory Rose) From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 05:18:51 1995 Return-Path: X-Vms-To: IN%"SCAGC-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Approved-By: ALBAN@DELPHI.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 01:38:15 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Alban St. Albans" Subject: Re: Serwyl: Feedback idea, Impeachment To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L in re feedback: i'm not sure who came up with the idea, but someone did, and the idea was to provide feedback from the top down? th From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 05:20:12 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Approved-By: Janna.Spanne@KANSLI.LTH.SE Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 09:26:47 +0100 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Janna Spanne Subject: Re: Serwyl: Response to Cariadoc's Proposal To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L >I don't know about your Kingdom, but I've seen little evidence that Trimar= is >would want to put together the structure necessary to have our own >corporation. It's just too much of a hassle in terms on manpower and time. > And I suspect there are other Kingdoms that feel the same. We LIKE havin= g a >central corporation take care of most of the adminitrivia so we can play t= he >game. So okay, don't make it an obligation, make it a right. In some places=20 (countries or states) incorporating separately is easy, cheap and practical= =20 (or even necessary), in other places it's expensive and messy. As long as t= he=20 central Corp stays in the US, why not give kingdoms the option of either=20 letting "head office" do the administration for them, at a price, or starti= ng=20 their own thing. Being a foreigner, I know nothing about the technicalities= of=20 it; is it legally feasible, those of you who know? /Catrin Janna.Spanne@Kansli.LTH.se From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 05:21:05 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Approved-By: Janna.Spanne@KANSLI.LTH.SE Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 10:21:18 +0100 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Janna Spanne Subject: Re: Serwyl: Feedback idea, Impeachment To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L >Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 01:38:15 -0500 >Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list >From: "Alban St. Albans" >Subject: Re: Serwyl: Feedback idea, Impeachment >To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L > >in re feedback: i'm not sure who came up with the idea, but someone >did, and the idea was to provide feedback from the top down? th This is all I've got of this message, obviously something's missing.=20 Has it died in Cyberspace, or has somebody got all of it? Please send=20 me a copy.=20 /Catrin=20 Janna.Spanne@Kansli.LTH.se From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 05:22:08 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: CORWYN@AOL.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 03:17:10 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Corwyn da Costa Subject: Re: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Hossein Ali Qomi writes >I don't use language to shock or simply to evoke emotion in this context. >I am using a technical, analytic term as a historian and social scientist. >"Stalinist" when used to describe a bureaucracy has a precise technical >meaning. Well, Greg, if you are going to be technical and academic about the issue of "posting style", a purely deconstructionalist, (ie non-contextual) approach to discussion, such as you seem to propound, has largely been discredited in just about all serious linguistic literature. The context and/or emotional association of a message is a key, and often more important componant than the overt message. And yes, references can be made available. It's my line of academic training. I would suggest that at the very least a perusal of any of Chomsky's responses to behaviorism would be useful for you to read on this issue. Plus, "cathexes" is most properly used as a noun, not a verb, again as part of a largely discredited school of research into human emotion and behavior. The reason for this pompous, argumentative and overly academic response is to respond to your following statement: >For God's sake, Myrdin, why should I be responsible for your emotional >cathexes to the technical use of a social scientific term describing a >particular form of bureaucratic development? Because, if you want to toss around "technical..social scientific" terms, and not be reacted to, do it in a "technical social scientific" journal. Claiming "oh no, those words mean other than you think, and you're ignorant if you didn't know about it" is both a waste of valuble time, and academic bullying. If you want to toss around "slovos" like "stalinist" "tyrannny" and etc, have the decency to understand that those not in your specific area of study may have other reactions than academic colleagues, and that these will color and effect the value of your overt communication. Don't be condescending to those who don't have your commitment to academic jargon. >I think my analysis of the "Stalinist" tendencies of the SCA >bureaucracy is extremely pertinent to the discussion of how the SCA governs >itself and I find it both irritating and disheartening that a fellow GC >member has no better response to a serious issue than to call me a hothead >and a troublemaker. And I find it irritating that your indiscriminate use of emotionally charged academic jargon in an inappropriate setting trivializes and alienates support >from what IS a very important issue. Corwyn, Baron, etc. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 06:46:27 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Greg Rose Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 06:15:43 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Greg Rose Subject: Re: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Corwyn, For someone who couldn't get his shit together to constructively participate in the nominating commitee, and who has participated in allowing this Council's discussions to become utterly bogged down in trivia, you have a hell of a lot of gall to lecture me. You didn't respond to a single salient point of my analysis of the SCA bureaucracy. I would normally have taken this to email, but I don't see responding privately to public calumny. Perhaps I never should have tried to explain my point; the advice of Matthew 7:6 seems more pertinent to these discussions by the minute. Hossein Ali Qomi (Gregory Rose) From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 07:21:12 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Greg Rose Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 06:46:10 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Greg Rose Subject: Re: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L "Stalinist" doesn't just mean "those nasty Soviet bastards from the 1930-40's" as Corwyn suggests. It isn't just a generic epithet thrown around to evoke an emotional response. When applied to a bureaucratic structure, it implies certain things about how that bureaucracy is structured and how it operates. I used the word in that sense. It isn't an esoteric academic meaning. It's a technical meaning used in common parlance. I explained precisely what that meaning was, and I got called a "deconstructionist" (there are people in the academic world who would die laughing at hearing me called a "deconstructionist" -- I was just arguing with them about the absurdity and futility of post-modernist methodologies on the Interscripta list) and was told that I was an academic bully. I'm pretty sick of the supercillious complaints about "posting style" and the meaning of words. It is symptomatic of the malaise of this forum that substantive debate over substantive issues is eschewed in favor of precious arguments about "style." Complaints about style are being used to deflect substantive discussion. It is very easy to say "I don't like how you said that" as a way of avoiding responding to the substantive points being raised. We've got real problems in the SCA and it doesn't matter _how_ anyone talks about them so long as we _talk_ about them. Some have complained that my rhetoric "seizes the high ground." I point out that that is _exactly_ what these complaints about style are trying to do. It is an old debater's trick to complain about style to avoid dealing with unpleasant reality. Perhaps the people using these techniques do not realize their effect, but that doesn't alter the objective result. Adults should be able to put considerations of style aside in serious discussions. Maybe it's time to behave as if we trusted each other to be adults and agreed to pay more attention to content than to form. Hossein Ali Qomi (Gregory Rose) From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 10:47:16 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2655 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 10:16:48 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: Re: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <199511011146.GAA06540@bronze.lcs.mit.edu> from "Greg Rose" at Nov 1, 95 06:46:10 am Greetings, from Tibor. Greg, in his way, has a very valid set of points to make. For one, the vast majority of this list was selected with professional backgrounds in mind. Professional terminology will appear, and we need to be prepared for that. Second, Greg has made some valid points, which are being lost in this mutual stylistic catharsis. If we can't respond to someone's post substantively, we should refuse to respond at all. This stylistic commentary isn't what we are here for. I don't know Myrdin's and Corwyn's motivations, and it behooves me therefore to treat them well. But "don't correct your partner on the dance floor." Stylistic questions, or commentary on language, can just as easily go to email as appear here. I wish they would. Stay focused, people. Before you post, ask yourself if your posting will forward our efforts, or not. If they won't make things better, and you must express them, private email is best. Speaking in Professor Rose's specific defense, he happens to have a Ph.D. in the area, and probably can illuminate us all on exactly what he means. Myrdin clearly didn't understand what Greg meant when he said Stalinist. Greg and I conferred in email, and I suggested that he clarify that Stalinist was a technical term, now used to describe specific governmental and bureaucratic forms whose key features match those of Stalin's government. I am sorry that Corwyn found this objectionable. It was my considerd advice to Greg, that we move the discussion to a technical plain. Frankly, I found that many of the features of Stalinist governments that Greg enumerated resonate somewhat in the worst cases of SCA structure. It may not be the rule, but it's a frequent occurrence. In summary: Complaints about style are being used to deflect substantive discussion. It is very easy to say "I don't like how you said that" as a way of avoiding responding to the substantive points being raised. We've got real problems in the SCA and it doesn't matter _how_ anyone talks about them so long as we _talk_ about them. Adults should be able to put considerations of style aside in serious discussions. Maybe it's time to behave as if we trusted each other to be adults and agreed to pay more attention to content than to form. I wish I had written this: but it was Greg. I hope you all read it carefully. Perhaps Greg's style is a bit difficult to take: I've been caught in his cross-hairs, and it wasn't fun. But OUR mandate requires each of US to think carefully when we receive a note. Greg's may challenge you more than most: but that is both because of style, AND depth. Tibor From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 11:19:12 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Rooscc@AOL.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 10:48:05 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Carole C. Roos" Subject: Alysoun: Summary To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Greetings from Alysoun Serwyl calls for dissenting opinions on the evaluation/feedback idea. In essence, this is a plan for linked officers in which subordinates attach evaluations to a report such as Doomsday, which the officer must pass to his or her superior, along with his or her own comments. This would go all the way up the chain and then come back down. In going through the postings, I find reservations on whether it would be useful for all linked offices and whether term limits wouldn't be just as effective. This plan does not address the Board and other positions such as barons. However, if we can wrap it up and get it off the table, we can then concentrate on the Board and on David's proposal. I have tried to pick the thread out for you and summarize it here. Let me know if I have missed or misunderstood any posting. 10/27 Fiacha raised the question of how to remove directors and officers without it becoming personal 10/28 Alysoun thought different mechanisms were needed for removing linked officers (those with superiors) than for those like the directors which were not linked. She offered an evaluation system for linked officers to depersonalize removal and strengthen the chain. 10/29 Serwyl agreed that different mechanism would be needed and thought that the evaluation system might work if it was done on a regular basis (the group gathering the meeting before the report was due). He pointed out that it would increase paperwork. 10/30 Gareth supported the evaluation system with a strong argument that it could change attitudes, suggested that it might be monthly, and that the evaluations with comments should come back down the chain. 10/30 Justin questioned whether the evaluation system was needed for anything other than seneschals 10/30 Grim posted on the usefulness of term limits, but pointed out that this does not work for positions like barons. He thinks we need a brute-force tool. 10/30 Tibor agreed with Justin that the evaluation system wasn't useful for all offices 10/30 Morgan also mentions term limits for officers. 10/31 Alysoun supports Gareth's idea of the comments in the evaluation system coming back down, thinks it would be good for all linked offices, but thinks once or twice a year is sufficient in normal circumstances. 10/31 Justin explains the Masonic system of rotating offices. 11/1 Serwyl agrees with the feedback idea, and calls for dissent. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 13:19:51 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Rooscc@AOL.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 12:40:43 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Carole C. Roos" Subject: Alysoun: on audience, substance To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Enough hard words have been exchanged I would like to remind everyone that by choosing to make the GC publicly available we should post to the broadest possible audience. This in no way restricts the substance of our discussion but it does require thought so that these ideas may be communicated clearly. Specialized terminology is shorthand for complex ideas. Taking time to explain these ideas makes for longer posts, but will enable us to move forward together and to influence those others outside the Council who are keeping up with our discussion. Hossein has in mind particular concerns. As I understand them they are: 1. appointments are controlled and 2. publicly accepted to support a single mind-set. 3. Part of this mind-set is supporting top-down directives which are 4. presented as representative of the whole. 5. This quality of unconditional support is viewed as the primary qualification for the position. 6. Open opposition is not tolerated. 7. The maintenance and enhancement of the institution has priority over the purpose of the institution. Or in a nutshell, the system is geared toward filling positions with yes-men. All organizations have a tendency to do this and to move toward a priority on the institution rather than its purpose. This tendency needs to be recognized and checked. I suspect that the resistance to anything that sounds like more bureaucracy is a reaction against this tendency. I do not think that most SCA people are yes-men out of an intentional dogma--they did not read the party book and dedicate themselves to it. It is more of a default mode. If I were going to appoint someone, I'd pick someone I knew rather than pull a name out of a hat and the names that would first come to mind would be people whom I found pleasant and easy to work with. As reasonable as this sounds, it means that I would pick people who shared my views. Because it is a general tendency, various means have been developed to counter it. The election system is one. Many of us feel that given the nature of the SCA an election system will be burdensome and too easy to manipulate to serve as the universal remedy. This does not mean that elections are out for some specific positions. For officers, I support a civil-service model, with accountablity tied to the subordinate level. This will at least eliminate incompetent yes-men. It should also improve the involvement of the general population which is necessary to counter the yes-man syndrome. The one point in Hossein's explanation that I am not sure of is the second, the public support one. I may not be understanding it. I am not sure that there is a general perception that only yes-men get positions--at least not in a you-have-to-be-in-the-party sort of way. I see it as more complicated than that. I don't think there is one "party" in power and I certainly don't think that there is one view among the people not in power. I think we have several different views of the SCA among the membership, that this has produced a long-standing tension, and that unless it is addressed it will move toward a crisis situation. I think that this tension works toward the yes-man phenomenon and toward institutional maintenance and enhancement. I'm not keen on using political examples from the real world, but I will in an effort to communicate this problem. The different view situation would be like a basic social problem such as class tensions (maybe like Mexico). Because this is so potentially explosive, the society will support whatever political party is strong enough to keep the society stable. This is not bad if that party used the power to work on the underlying problem. But since working on the problem will tick someone off, the party hesitates to do anything and works instead to consolidate control, arguing that this is better than a series of revolutions. No one wants to consider splitting the SCA along these tension lines. Dividing it geographically is considered. I fear that geographical division only buys time. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 13:30:22 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Maghnuis@AOL.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 12:54:37 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Magnus MagUire Subject: Re: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Sir Myrdin,(and Michael) Congatulations to you Sir. Vanish! And Enjoy! Magnus ...as if the second instruction is really needed ; ) From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 14:26:18 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1085 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 13:31:57 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: Re: Alysoun: Summary To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <951101104804_95066802@mail06.mail.aol.com> from "Carole C. Roos" at Nov 1, 95 10:48:05 am Greetings from Tibor. Looking backwards on the whole officer/subordinate discussion, I find myself seeing at least two different types of local or kingdom officers. Possibly more. Yet we seem to be developing only one sort of model. Take, for example, a local chancellor of the exchequer or seneschal. Those are locally appointed officers of the corporation, managing it's business affairs or assets. If ever there was a place for a heirarchical model of organization, from the top down, that might well be it. But, we also have other kinds of "officers" such as Barons, Heralds, Arts or Sciences officers, and so forth. They don't need a heirarchy: they need a resource. It isn't the top that should be saying "what have you done for me, lately." It's the bottom. There may be other sorts, like Earl Marshals, who do a bit of each. Does that call for a third model, or is it a combination of the first two? Until we spend some time determining our heirarchy of authority (if any) and get a grasp on who each officer's constituency is, we will continue to thrash. Tibor From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 14:59:15 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: CORWYN@AOL.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 14:05:10 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Corwyn da Costa Subject: Re: Posting style To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Sorry to continue this, but; The point of my comment, which perhaps should have been in private, was that I hope that a discussion group within a society based on courtesy should try to avoid using intentionally provocotive and escalating language. But, if such language is neccessary, which it may be, to take responsibility for peoples reaction to such statements in some way other than to deny the validity of the reaction. I think that this is a general point that often gets lost in forum disucussion. My error lies in responding to a specific post to a specific person in a public forum, which judging by the vitriol of some responses suggest that I was particulalry provocative. So, to practice what i preach, I apologize for the wording, if not the content, as explained above. Clearly I should have made this a general rather than a specific comment. Okay, now before this turns into a flameout, I just want to say that my further responses from me are going via EMAIL. Anyone else who wants to comment on my participation in the GC to date, or my posting can feel free to do so in private, but personally, I would appreciate less obscenity and insult, even in private. Corwyn From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 15:44:37 1995 Return-Path: X-Nupop-Charset: English Approved-By: flieg@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 12:01:30 -0800 Reply-To: flieg@garnet.berkeley.edu Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Flieg Hollander Subject: Frederick: RE: Serwyl: Feedback idea, Impeachment To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In message Tue, 31 Oct 1995 23:02:16 -0500, Chuck Hack writes: Flieg here -- >> > > I agree completely. And a pre set get together is just what I suggested > in my post just the other day. It seems that we have several people now > who like the general idea (in one form or another). Are there any > dissenting voices? If so please speak up. This is a basic enough topic > that we may be able to hammer it into a real proposal in a reasonably > short time. What kind of a proposal do you have in mind? This is something which ought to be settled by the officers involved, not on an overall basis for the SCA and all officers. To put this in perspective, one of the first things that I did as Vesper Principal Herald when I took office 12 years ago was to _reduce_ the amount of paperwork that had to flow from the local herald to Kingdom. Most local officers really don't need to send reports up the chain. Even seneschales and Exchequers really only need to send something up if there has been an event, and once a year for the Doomsday report and Marshals/Chirurgeons if there has been an injury. Making all the officers _have_ to get together for bureaucratic bullshit takes just one more day out of the already busy year, and it doesn't even have anything to do with the game. Further, to do such a thing gives the officers the idea that they have power, and I don't feel that is a good idea. > Re Alysoun's Comments on Galleron (?)s No confidence vote: > > >> I like the no confidence idea. If we can strengthen the officer links, >> the kingdom seneschals will have the assurance that they are speaking >> for the people and that the people will back them up. I don't mean to >> be excluding royalty because I do think they have an important role to >> play, but the key thing for checking the board lies with the >> administrative. Look at this way: if the board should ignore or depose >> a crown, the kingdom is what suffers. Ignoring or deposing a great >> officer hurts the corporation. (You want what report when?) >> > > I like the no confidence vote too (gee, all this agreement in one day). I > would suggest that we think about fairly low no confidence vote levels > (something along the lines of Cariadoc's levels): > > 10% of the populace, > 5% of the peers > 51% of the Crowns or Kingdom Seneschals. I would add here "or IAC members". They are Kingdom based, but more permanent, and have a different viewpoint (I hope) than either of the other two groups. > > For a binding impeachment we would want something a bit tougher, I don't > know about actual populace levels, but for the Crowns and Seneschals I > would like to see a majority of both the Crowns and Seneschals TOGETHER > to effect a binding impeachment. My main fear being in giving Crowns too > much power. They are (as a group) very transient and more prone to > emotional responses to issues. Seneschals tend to be a more conservative > lot, and could provide a stabilizing influence. Again, I would add the IAC. That gives you a total voting base of 39 people, so that the overall discontent level would have to be high, the number of people relatively low, and a random switch of only one or two votes would not be as significant. > > > Re publishing impeachment proceedings, Alysouns said: > > >> I have never seen an organization willing to advertise internal >> difficulties by allowing impeachment forms in an official publication. >> > > We do not like to air dirty laundry either. In fact, I believe there is > an administrative policy against publishing anything that would put the > SCA in a bad light, which such advertisements could be. If there were to > be announcements in TI or Kingdom newsletters, they would have to be in a > very dry factual format rather than political forum. Which means that we need to change that administrative ruling. Period. > > Serwyl > * * * Frederick of Holland, MSCA, OP, etc. *** *** *** flieg@garnet.berkeley.edu _|___|___|_ |===========| (((Flieg Hollander, Chem. Dept., U.C. Berkeley))) ================== Old Used Duke ================= [All subjects of the Crown are equal under its protection and no Corporation is going to convince me otherwise.] From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 19:24:38 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Mark Waks Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 18:45:50 EST Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Waks Subject: Re: Serwyl: Response to Cariadoc's Proposal To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Solveig... -- Justin >From: Solveig Throndardottir >Subject: Re: Serwyl: Response to Cariadoc's Proposal >Date: Wed, 1 Nov 95 18:28:22 EST >In-Reply-To: <951031215250_9286529@mail06.mail.aol.com>; from "Chuck Hack" at > Oct 31, 95 9:52 pm Noble Cousins! Lord Serwyl notes that the BoD is unlikely to be very eager to deconstruct the corporation. With this I agree. However, all that is necessary at the moment is for the BoD to agree to allowing a new category of group membership. This would go a long way towards handling the various non-U.S. groups. Simple equity suggests that the BoD should allow U.S. groups (and, no the law is not at all the same in each and every state, for pity sakes the U.S. has one Code of Napoleon jurisdiction) the same equal footing. I really suspect that given the oportunity of separate incorporation, that most U.S. groups will opt to simply stay a part of the monolithic corporation. At the same time, the corporation would formally acknolwedge Barony of the Bridge, Inc. which has been around a long long time now. (I hope that I recall the group correctly, regardless there is a separately incorporated group in the U.S. part of the East Kingdom and it has been there for a long long time.) It seems to me that the issue of separate incorporation should be one not of high-politics, but of simply whether it better serves the legal needs of the local group. Your Humble Servant Solveig Throndardottir Amateur Scholar From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 21:09:05 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 846 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 20:30:50 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: Galleron: Re: Feedback idea (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Galleron. -- Tibor Forwarded message: From WMclean290@aol.com Wed Nov 1 16:43 EST 1995 Subject: Galleron: Re: Feedback idea Please forward to GC I agree that the last thing local marshals and pursuivants need is a more obligatory paper-pushing. How about this: Seneschals must include comments on their doomsday reports, and must forward comments on a more frequent basis if local members request it. The comment "Everything is peachy here, no need for feedback" is acceptable if true. There actually are groups like that. Other officers must forward comments if requested, but are not required to otherwise. Anyone can send a copy of their comments under separate cover to the superior if they think there is a chance that the report will go astray. Will McLean/Galleron de Cressy From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 22:46:54 1995 Return-Path: X-Vms-To: IN%"SCAGC-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Approved-By: ALBAN@DELPHI.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 22:02:02 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Alban St. Albans" Subject: Re: Serwyl: Feedback idea, Impeachment To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L about that very short and truncated message i sent out? either my mail server went weird, or, more likely, i pressed the wrong button - but the thing wasn't supposed to have been sent out at all? apologies. (and, now that i think about it - what i was going to say before things went wonky was that i'm not sure top-down feedback would be all that worthwhile. it's usually the people from below who have the most worthwhile things to say about an officer. those above might have an acquaintanceship with a certain person, but isn't it usually of the "has he/she sent in the reports on time, and are they legible?" type? if a superior officer _does_ hear of someone down below, it's usually high praise or low rumblings of trouble, and rarely anything in between? in other words, officers would get the most and best feedback from the people they're in contact with, which is their constituency, rather than the people to whom they report. i think. alban From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 23:38:43 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Serwyl@AOL.COM Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 23:07:26 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Chuck Hack Subject: Re: Serwyl: Feedback idea, Impeachment To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Greetings From Serwyl, Actually Alban, I think the bottom up feedback is what we are all more interested in right now. Top down is a whole other issue. I can see that there are serious reservations about having this applied to all officers, but an evaluation once a year by the people your office serves is not all that much to ask for, especially if it is tied to a corporate philosophy that allows individuals to make written complaints/comments/suggestions about their officers and actually expect they will be read by that officer's superior. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Wed Nov 1 23:52:10 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Approved-By: arthur dent Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 23:16:45 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: arthur dent Subject: Re: Keep going To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <951005083724_36951975@mail02.mail.aol.com> On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, Magnus MagUire wrote: Actually this particular book does give you a generic template of by-laws thats pretty standard for NORMAL non-profits+++3 > I have NOT read the book. > I still have to consider this BAD advice. > Just cuz someone files a peice of paer with a State doesn't make you a > Corporation. > You have to act like one too. > You have to have Articles and By laws that allow and direct you how to act > like a Corp. > You have to have an organisation that fits your needs. > > You don't get these from a book and you don't get this by having some company > file a sheet of paper in Delaware. > > Magnus J.D. > Where do I send the Bill? > From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Nov 2 00:37:42 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Approved-By: Nigel Haslock Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 20:52:16 -0800 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Nigel Haslock Subject: Fiacha on Re: Galleron: Re: Feedback idea (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L In-Reply-To: <199511020130.UAA19114@abel.math.harvard.edu> Greetings from Fiacha, > Forwarded for Galleron. -- Tibor > > Forwarded message: > From WMclean290@aol.com Wed Nov 1 16:43 EST 1995 > Subject: Galleron: Re: Feedback idea > > Seneschals must include comments on their doomsday reports, and must forward > comments on a more frequent basis if local members request it. The comment > "Everything is peachy here, no need for feedback" is acceptable if true. > There actually are groups like that. > > Will McLean/Galleron de Cressy I have a distinct feeling that in a happy branch this would work wonderfully and be an utter waste of time, but that in a divided branch the minority will be attacked and vilified by the majority. The vilification will use the usual private channels and the individuals attacked may never recover. The paper trail will be permanent 'proof' of the victims evil intentions. I do not support this suggestion. Fiacha From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Nov 2 08:00:40 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Priority: normal Approved-By: Marci Haw Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 07:30:08 -0500 Reply-To: MarciH@medicine.dmed.iupui.edu Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Marci Haw Organization: IU Department of Medicine Subject: Viting for a Leader/Administrator To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Date sent: Wed, 01 Nov 1995 16:52:37 -0500 (EST) From: John M Elmore/DELCO Subject: Post to GC Digest To: Marci Haw John - Voting for a Leader/Administrator This is a belated "Me too." I would like to see a brief resume and idea of a plan on how each candidate would increase the efficiency of our decision-making process. John of Sternfeld From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Nov 2 08:07:19 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Priority: normal Approved-By: Marci Haw Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 07:31:26 -0500 Reply-To: MarciH@medicine.dmed.iupui.edu Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Marci Haw Organization: IU Department of Medicine Subject: John - Comments on Governing Models To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L "John - Comments on Governing Models" Confederation vs Umbrella In favor of the Confederation model I do like the idea of bringing the policy-making decisions nearer to the level of the people most affected by those decisions in the Confederation model. I have heard many times people complain of the "distant and all powerful Board". Most of the people playing our game will not involve themselves in the decision-making process,even when it affects them directly. As demonstrated in the "pay to play" exercise. As long as everyone has an opportunity to comment, whether they use it or not, most everyone will be happy. My concern with the Confederation is finding the personnel to fill the additional Boards. As an example, I have heard many times how the Midrealm Curia is viewed to be self-appointing and insular as the Corp Board is alleged. I have served on the Midrealm Curia for 5 1/2 years and my observation has been that when it is time for a Great Officer to retire, we are lucky to have three qualified applicants to pick from. This out of the largest population in the Society. The Great Officer posts at would at least have the advantage of being directly involved with the "game" whereas a Board member's post would be mostly administrative/policy-makers = boring stuff. Once the newness wears off I believe the board members would be soon reduced to hunting for replacements. As I have stated in earlier posts - the current board is deluged with appeals and decision-requests that no other board is asked. Forming some other body, a "Supreme Court" as discussed would help in reliving some of the burden. A Board of Directors should be policy-makers and nothing more. Creating several smaller Boards will not solve the problem, just move it to a more personal level. I favor our current board with; added accountability, a mechanism to give the populus the opportunity to comment on by-law changes (things that affect Joe SCA) and less responsibilities. That's all for now John of Sternfeld From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Nov 2 10:09:24 1995 Return-Path: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2270 Approved-By: Mark Schuldenfrei Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 09:28:34 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: GC and responsibility To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Forwarded for Angharad -- Tibor Forwarded message: Greetings to the Grand Council from Angharad ver' Rhuawn. In several recent postings, a number of GC members have argued against considering various options and structures, on the grounds that they do not believe that the Board would accept them. I am writing to implore you to reconsider that approach to your deliberations. When the GC was formed, its charge was to consider the structure of the Society and to try, as best it could, to make recommendations of its best judgment of what structures, rules, and other mechanisms would best serve the Society. The Board promised to listen to any suggestion that the GC brought in. It seems to me that the GC owes it to the rest of us to try to do that. It seems to me that the GC _cannot_ fulfill that charge, if it begins by limiting the options it will discuss based on its guesses of what the Board will or will not accept. First, you may misjudge the Board. It would be tragic to throw away the chance of a course of action that would benefit us all because you were not willing to risk being told "no". Second, even if you are right, there is a benefit to having seriously considered what you would want without the restriction. It can guide fallback positions; it can inform compromises; and it can make clear when there is no longer any _point_ in compromise. Third, there is the issue of keeping faith. Good gentles, when you took this job, you promised the rest of us that you would bring your _best_ judgment to the Board. If your best judgment is that nothing much needs to change, then bringing that answer back would keep faith. But if your best judgment is that we need something the Board will not agree to, and you do not bring back the description of what you genuinely believe we need, you have broken faith with us all. Please, please, please: do not tie your hands behind your backs, for fear that someone else may not let you into the cookie jar. There are worse fates than being told "No." Enforcing "no" on yourself, and breaking faith with both yourselves and those who count on you in the process, is one. -- Angharad ver' Rhuawn/Terry Nutter From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Nov 2 11:19:04 1995 Return-Path: Approved-By: Rooscc@AOL.COM Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 10:45:16 -0500 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: "Carole C. Roos" Subject: Alysoun: evaluation/feedback To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Greetings from Alysoun Let me clarify a few things on the evaluation system. First for Fleig: the officers don't have to get together--the local group does. It's called a business meeting and we have two a month anyway, which I'm told is not unusual. So part of a already scheduled business meeting is all we are talking about. If any groups are so with-it that they have business meetings in persona, this should be no exception. It makes no difference if someone says "You never answer my calls" or "I send messengers to you who never return" the point is made. >From your post I gather that quarterly reports are not universal. Doomsday is. And if there are no weaknesses to consider, I don't think it is so horrid to ask groups to spend a few minutes once a year to say "good job" to their officers. I think you have a deeper reservation and I would like to hear more about it. The trouble with a very minimalist view of the local group's involvement with an administrative apparatus is that the apparatus then is unrestrained. Since there are people making rules both on kingdom and corporation level, it seems imperative to establish boundaries on them by holding them accountable to the people. On paper work: how much paperwork would be involved would depend on how well or how poorly things were going. While my main focus is on the primary offices, it seems to me that any area important enough to the people to have an officer for it should be open for evaluation. All and all, I see this system as energy saving: providing a set time and way to register likes and dislikes rather than grumbling in small cliques, going around officers or over their heads, grousing to superiors at events, etc. For the primary offices or where there is a big problem, once a year may not be enough. I'm not clear on Fiacha's difficulty. Was this directed to Galleron or on the main idea? Regularizing the evaluation system should reduce, not encourage, the possibility of vilification because it puts it out in the open and allows the officer to respond (as opposed to the all too common practice of bending the superior's ear informally). Part of the idea is focusing on the job not the person--a complaint that the A&S officer is a mean authenticity witch gets nowhere; a complaint that beginners get no help does. Feedback: It's not that the superior has pearls of wisdom to bestow as much as proof that the report was read. I would like to think that many of the higher officers actually can contribute--offer suggestions to help people in the lower offices, share solutions across regions or groups, etc. If a regional passes on a number of similar complaints, the superior should pay close attention to the regional's comments: it makes a difference if the regional just had a baby (good excuse) or thinks the complainers are just crabby (bad excuse). In the first case, the superior encourages the regional to explain the situation to the local groups and promise better response in the future; in the second, the superior needs to work with the regional for improvement or removal. In either case, a short note to the lower link is appropriate, to let the people know that they have been heard. From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Nov 2 11:50:43 1995 Return-Path: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Approved-By: Janna.Spanne@KANSLI.LTH.SE Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 17:19:06 +0100 Reply-To: SCA Grand Council Discussion list Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Janna Spanne Subject: Re: GC and responsibility To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L > When the GC was formed, its charge was to consider the structure of the > Society and to try, as best it could, to make recommendations of its > best judgment of what structures, rules, and other mechanisms would best > serve the Society. The Board promised to listen to any suggestion that > the GC brought in. > > It seems to me that the GC owes it to the rest of us to try to do that. > It seems to me that the GC _cannot_ fulfill that charge, if it begins > by limiting the options it will discuss based on its guesses of what the > Board will or will not accept. First of all, I'd like to thank Angaharad for reminding us all why we're he= re. > First, you may misjudge the Board. It would be tragic to throw away > the chance of a course of action that would benefit us all because you > were not willing to risk being told "no". Yes. During the Board representatives' visit in Nordmark, I was amazed to h= ear=20 them talk in terms of decentralization on the modern level, fairly close to= =20 some of the more radical proposals that have been put forward here and on=20 SCA-Reform. "Separate incorporation" was mentioned several times, not as a= =20 panacea, but it certainly wasn't a fighting word.=20 Granted, those were just two Board members, with no mandate to make decisio= ns=20 or promises. Groupthink is a powerful beast. Still, we can't *know* until w= e=20 ask.=20 > Please, please, please: do not tie your hands behind your backs, for fear > that someone else may not let you into the cookie jar. There are worse > fates than being told "No." Enforcing "no" on yourself, and breaking > faith with both yourselves and those who count on you in the process, is > one. Yes. There's this very useful saying about words breaking no bones, and "no= " is=20 just a word, even coming from the Board. And then... should the worst night= mare=20 turn out to be true, and the Board tried to kick people out of the Society = for=20 backing a radical reorganization proposal, it would certainly say a lot abo= ut=20 the Board and about the way our game is organized, and we'd of course be fr= ee=20 to draw our own conclusions and act on them. =20 Before embarking on a course of self-censorship, it's quite useful to=20 contemplate the worst possible consequence of speaking one's mind, and cons= ider=20 if avoiding it is worth compromising with one's conscience.=20 /Catrin Janna.Spanne@Kansli.LTH.se From owner-scagc-l@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Thu Nov 2 13:23:00 1995 Return-Path: X-Nupop-Charset: English Approved-By: flieg@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 09:32:31 -0800 Reply-To: flieg@garnet.berkeley.edu Sender: SCA Grand Council Discussion list From: Flieg Hollander Subject: Flieg -- RE: Alysoun: evaluation/feedback To: Multiple recipients of list SCAGC-L Flieg here again-- In message Thu, 2 Nov 1995 10:45:16 -0500, "Carole C. Roos" writes: > Greetings from Alysoun > > Let me clarify a few things on the evaluation system. > > First for Fleig: the officers don't have to get together--the local group > does. It's called a business meeting and we have two a month anyway, which > I'm told is not unusual. So part of a already scheduled business meeting > is all we are talking about. If any groups are so with-it that they have > business meetings in persona, this should be no exception. It makes no > difference if someone says "You never answer my calls" or "I send > messengers to you who never return" the point is made. OK, that's better in some ways and worse in others. Why should there be a _corporate_ rule requiring bimonthly or quarterly meetings? If the meetings are being held every two weeks, it is unnecessary, and if the new meetings are _in addition_, then it is still a burden. It also doesn't solve the problem of telling the difference between an officer who is a flake and an officer whose mundane job doesn't allow him to attend the business meetings of the shire, while he does the job perfectly. It also doesn't address the case of groups which do not hold business meetings. While common, they are _not_ universal, nor required, up to this point. (Example: The Shire of Beau Fleuve. Under the direction of myself and my Lady, the Shire explicitly refused to have "business meetings". We had a monthly workshop in some aspect of medieval life and a weekly fighter practice and a bunch of other random get-togethers. Any business got taken care of informally. Worked fine for two years (I then left for the Coast). Example: Province of the Mists went for many (5? 8?) years without a business meeting, then started having them again. No apparent difference in function.) > > >> From your post I gather that quarterly reports are not universal. >> Doomsday is. > And if there are no weaknesses to consider, I don't think it is so > horrid to ask groups to spend a few minutes once a year to say "good job" > to their officers. The only reason Doomsday is universal is that it is _required_ by the Steward/Society Seneschal. It is an artificial regularity. (It is probably even a reasonably good idea, but it is not a natural function.) Now a natural function is the meeting of the great officers with the old and new King and Queen some time between Crown Tourney and Coronation. It is my belief that every Kingdom has this meeting _in some form or other_. The very irregularity of form is an indication of its organic function. > > I think you have a deeper reservation and I would like to hear more about > it. The trouble with a very minimalist view of the local group's > involvement with an administrative apparatus is that the apparatus then > is unrestrained. Since there are people making rules both on kingdom and > corporation level, it seems imperative to establish boundaries on them by > holding them accountable to the people. I think my reservations have to do with imposing a decision which will involve extra work for the majority of people, impose _requirements_ of action rather than _performance_, and IMHO, not work in the truly pathological cases anyway. We have a formal reporting system of a sort here in the West, at least for the Seneschals. There was a Shire which "went bad" due to personality problems and it was most of 18 months before it became obvious, and that was in the end due to random actions on the part of other people. * * * Frederick of Holland, MSCA, OP, etc. *** *** *** flieg@garnet.berkeley.edu _|___|___|_ |===========| (((Flieg Hollander, Chem. Dept., U.C. Berkeley))) ================== Old Used Duke ================= [All subjects of the Crown are equal under its protection and no Corporation is going to convince me otherwise.]